"Well, this one is a fighting game set in an arena I used to watch fights at! Though not all the fighters are from the same place. And some are made up. Originally I was just going to let you choose fighters and watch them duke it out, but it wasn't so hard to give each one a few different - postures, I guess. Look, balanced, aggressive, defensive, and 'ultimate attack'-"

She points to four little buttons on the illusory architecture.

"The big thing that will take a lot of refinement is the skill and tactics of the fighters. They only know attacks and motions I directly give them, more or less. Look at this."

A spear guy goes through a series of attacks on a straw dummy. One two three. Horizontal sweep. One two three. One two three. Horizontal sweep. They're almost exactly the same each time, and he returns to a neutral pose between strikes.

"You see it?"

He takes a seat and leans in, fascinated. 

"Remarkable... It is possible to create magical effects of such complexity, but they are almost always constructs or intelligent items, outside relics of ancient Azlant and Thassilon. I see the stone there, is that effectively an intelligent item that can cast Silent Image at will and change it in response to the glyphs a user indicates?"

"Huh? Oh, the rock is just a convenient physical reference so someone who isn't me can move it around. The magic is all - free floating. It'll expire eventually when I stop feeding it. Last longer in an inactive state."

"Free-floating magic to be fed..." He rubs his hands together. "Do you mean in terms of concentrating on it, or are you one of those arcanists that can tinker with an ongoing spell to stretch out its effects?"

He reaches out a finger to prod at one of the buttons tentatively.

The button feels solid; He happens to have selected one of the arena changes, with a little icon of a cliff. The training dummies fall into nothingness, and a trio of small (~10 feet high or about a foot and a half after scaling) craggy hills appear in the arena. Spear guy poofs into smoke and is relocated to a starting platform.

Weiss taps a button on the other side and an archer appears on the other platform, and fires an arrow at him, and hits. Spear guy rushes forward into the low ground to break line of sight, running across the 'arena'. The archer also starts running.

"My magic appears to be continuous instead of discrete. I think this whole thing is approximately fourth circle?"

"Tactile," he mutters to himself. 

He reaches out again to poke not a button but at the archer, to see if the fighters can be felt too.

"All apparently-continuous phenomena are quantized at some level⁶. Fourth-circle or not, a spell like this could earn you a visiting professorship at any school of the arcane you care to name. I could perhaps use a Permanency to preserve it once it is complete, there is a glut in the Korvosan diamond market lately." 

⁶ See Talaire, 2011.

His finger would go through the archer, but she has the sudden memory of Master Hand, and has her dodge-roll instead. And then fire an arrow at his finger, causing a phantom pinprick of pain.

"The thing about professorships is that you have to teach, and I can't, not this at least. Permanency, hmm? I'm not sure how that'd work with my illusions but it would be fascinating to find out."

Togomor's finger is withdrawn with a chuckle and he reflexively checks it for blood. Any source of bleeding is a serious concern for a bloatmage like him. 

"Oh, don't worry, most high-circle professors are there for the prestige of the institution over any didactic abilities, they get paid just the same," he says wryly. 

"It works similarly to enchanting an item, if you've done that before. Diamond dust acts as an anchor for the spellform that prevents its natural dispersion and collapse. It is perhaps a little like your use of the stone, though diamonds are more naturally suited to that purpose by their purity and structure."

"Yep, diamonds, the great stabilizer. Everyone wants diamond dust. You'd be lucky to get a saddlebag full if you scoured the entire city of Lyonesse, down to the wards in the manor foundations. Hmmm.... Well, it's an option, and I do want to explore these sort of ideas now that I have them, I'm mad at myself for not getting clever before..."

No blood. She's not that mean. Archer goes back to shooting at the spearman sprinting at her.

"Lyonesse?" He asks absently, enjoying the show.

"Third most populous city of Noten, said to be the capital of magical industry, imperial wizards guild and dozens of competing magic schools."

Archer: Dodge roll and try to open the range again! 

Spearman: Nasty stab to the thigh and hot pursuit!

"Oh, from Tirra, your home planet. It was a local variety of wild magic that brought you here, wasn't it? What other ideas have you had that you'd want to develop further? I do find the gentle pace of research, experimentation, and crafting a welcome respite from the frantic rhythm of adventures, always sleep and spellcast and sleep again."

"Yeah, some people hate academia and others hate danger. And yeah, wild Gate basically. How does Permanence... Work? Maybe I can try to implement it in illusion. If that even makes sense as a concept."

"There are competing perspectives. One view is that it is the spell equivalent of Unguent of Timelessness, arresting the passage of time for the spell as Time Stop arrests the passage of time for everyone but the caster, and that it should be categorized into the hypothetical school of Chronomancy. The proposal I subscribe to is that it functions like Wish, removing the normal limits on magic with the aid of diamond as a reagent, stabilizing at a lower circle because Permanency is restricted to channel that unlimited magic only into the parts of existing spells that determine their duration." He starts to gesticulate, not forming any somatic components but as someone genuinely enthused by these topics. "In theory, it might be possible to produce equivalents that set other spell variables to infinity, like an 'Omnipresence' that expands a spell to fill an entire plane or an 'Omnipotence' that enhances a damaging spell to the point that anything not entirely immune to the energies is instantly destroyed on contact with them... Alas, in practice such research usually ends in a Wish-crater where the wizard's tower once stood."

"Replicating the spell with an Illusion shouldn't be possible, there's no equivalent of Shadow Conjuration for universal spells. Hmm... Perhaps you could start with Permanent Image as a base instead, to be modified with your magic's conditionals? I may be able to put you in contact with someone who can cast that, I had plans to call on them already."

"Unlimited magic... Channeling with a diamond... I already know several ways to absorb... I know how that feels... Hmm. HMM! ...Could that work? Try it and see later, yes... Well, I'd be willing to experiment with others' illusions, permanent or not, to find out!"

Oh no, the consequences of his actions. "If you are to make such attempts, I feel that in my new position as court mage I must insist that you do so far beyond the city limits."

He had better move up his plans for binding Yzahnum so she can do the safer Permanent Image-based experiments while Korvosa remains intact. 

"Beyond the city? Why would-" Ohhhhhhhh right, maybe egregious miscasts are, you know, frowned upon for the side effects, and she'd want privacy for those-

-He mentioned Craters. Right. The Weave is a Tirra thing.

"-Right nevermind. I'll try this outside the city if I try it, yes."

Crisis averted. That he almost caused. Ileosa doesn't need to know about that bit. 

"Much appreciated. Do you have any other questions? If not, I'll take my leave, though I would like to see the finished product."

"I do intend to gift it properly once it's finished," especially since she can just copy all the patterns again, redoing the same illusion work is 10 times easier. "That won't be today. I guess I'll go find that magic school if I think of something later. Or send a letter."

"Then may your spells stabilize and your sleep be sound," he says courteously, exiting with another half-bow. He has a crown and a cloak to finish crafting, and an efreeti to bind.

Yeah it's probably a good time to head out and enjoy (in as much as it's even POSSIBLE) the city for a little while.

...She should finally get around to wandering invisibly in the less well off areas to get a feel for how people who aren't the Countess Queen feel about her? And other authorities/factions in general. The fact that the GRAVEYARD people missed a whole ass dungeon in the GRAVEYARD is bothering her.

So maybe some general snooping and looking for trouble all over town. Illusioned or invisible; She's rapidly gaining a reputation here, too.

On the streets of Korvosa, roaming invisibly or under another illusion, Weiss will encounter:

A humble shrine to Saint Alika, seeress of Pharasma, decorated with mother-of-pearl and with offerings of oysters and milk teeth. 

A couple of house drakes that keep a watchful eye on her while she moves about under cover of invisibility, before a third comes over to talk to them, mentioning her name and Rixpar's. Then they give her a forepaw wave and leave her to whatever she's doing.

A few people in the dockyards, one of them fencing stolen goods to another while her bodyguard keeps a lookout, talking quietly about how the whole Order of the Nail have left the city, giving up on Korvosa, and speculating that the Cerulean Society will raise prices in their absence and increase their pressure on those criminals who don't pay for legitimacy with them. Was this House Arkona's plan?